A problem still to be overcome is that of improving the coordination between the sensors within a platform, or by extension to sensors on multiple platforms. This improvement is essential in order to obtain greater benefit from the information collected by each sensor, while also providing better coordination of the resources used by the sensors, such as, notably, time, frequency, or energy consumption.
In prior art solutions, combat or surveillance platforms carry sensors of various kinds which are controlled by a mission system. Each sensor receives its commands from the system which defines its operating mode at a given instant, and the sensor then sends more or less pre-processed data by return. These data are then fused by the mission system to develop a global tactical situation, and this situation can be shared between platforms.
The existing solutions are therefore of a pyramidal type, in that the flow of commands and results is vertical.
These solutions have a number of drawbacks; in particular,                the observation, decision and action loops cannot be short, although certain new functions require very high reactivity between sensors and actuators;        the amount of information that the sensors can exchange is limited because of the bandwidth of the links between levels, making fine synchronization impossible;        the architectures of the sensor systems are frequently dependent on the host platform, making these systems less generic and limiting their portability to other platforms.        